A student is given instruction on how to move into a building to get the drop on a potential opponent, rather than vice versa. COURTESY OF FRONT SIGHT FIREARMS TRAINING INSTITUTE

CHECKLIST

Accommodations

The nearest town to Front Sight is Pahrump, about 20 miles northwest.

Las Vegas is 50 miles east. These Pahrump hotels seek to entice Front Sight students with discounts. Some accept shipments of ammunition from guests who can't or don't want to transport it themselves. Some hotels require additional safety steps on the part of armed patrons.

Best Western Pahrump Station, 1101 S. Highway 160. 775-727-5100, bestwestern.com. $85-$95 regular rates, $64-$74 for Front Sight students. Students must read and sign a safety policy form; no dry practice (practicing with an unloaded gun) is allowed in rooms. Ammo shipments are accepted.

Pahrump Nugget,

681 S. Highway 160.

866-751-6500, pahrumpnugget.com. $70-$90 regular, $60-$80 for Front Sight students. No restrictions or extra paperwork for armed guests; guns are not allowed in the casino. Ammo deliveries are accepted.

Instead of a pine-smelling forest with a rippling mountain lake, say, you get the hard edge of a Mojave Desert badland. Instead of sweating in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops, you might be bundled up against an icy breeze. And instead of learning to tie lanyards or tool a leather belt, your task is to splatter a simulated hostage taker's brains across his captive without harming a hair on her innocent head.

Front Sight Firearms Training Institute, a 550-acre range and complex 50 miles west of Las Vegas, is about learning to shoot. Life being what it is, the target can be a person. I went to see how well the school presents this grim skill set.

‘House' on the range

It's Day Three of Four Day Defensive Handgun, and the 34 people in my course are squinting in the harsh desert sunlight at the slightly eerie scene we've just been dropped off in front of: rank after rank of door frames lined up on the wide, graveled expanse of a target range. No walls, just frames and doors. Their purpose is to give us a taste of room clearing – how to move around inside a building to get the drop on a potential opponent, rather than vice versa.

The staff chivies us into a couple of lines and we watch what's happening at the four or five fake doors in use. Each has an instructor in the school's vaguely military/SWAT uniform of black boots, black bloused cargo pants, black cap, gray epauletted and name-tagged shirt and dark wraparound eyewear. My instructor is using a bright orange, Glock-shaped piece of plastic to demonstrate the correct way to open the door (don't “muzzle” your doorknob hand with the pistol), scan the room for bad guys (step back from the doorway and “slice the pie,” taking small lateral steps while observing ceiling to floor), then advance through the doorway (don't hold the fake Glock out in front where someone lurking can grab it).

It's a tiny sample of tactics, and each student gets only a few minutes of instructor time before being bundled back aboard the shuttle and taken to another range with a miniature version of a “shoot house” – a live-fire room-clearing simulation. The object is to use good movement technique, shoot the poster-size bad guy targets and spare any innocents.

I enter the “house” with my 9 mm Ruger in hand and immediately fire three rounds into the torso of a guy with a clown mask and a leveled pistol. In the same room is a woman holding a clutch purse. I pass her by.

Moving into the next room, I take down all three guys, putting a bullet into the head – the vulnerable “cranio-ocular cavity” – of the one holding a child hostage, as per doctrine. Unfortunately, one of the three turns out to be a phone repair guy. I'm not sure what he's doing in the same room with a couple of thugs, but that's not the point, of course. In the half-second or less I have to observe and act, it sure looks like that gadget in his hand is a gun.

It's a tiny perspective on what a cop faces when a suspect pulls something out of his pocket, or someone points what may or may not be a toy gun.

After that, it's back to “square range” drills: Draw from a holster, line up the sights and press (not squeeze) the trigger. It's the meat and potatoes of the course – which has the goal of training participants to handle a simple scenario that hopefully never arises: Armed citizen must react in the face of threat to life and limb.

Best option: Run like hell and let the cops handle it, if possible. Worst option: Save yourself by putting shots into an attacker until the threat is stopped.

Why learn to shoot?

There are numerous instructors in Orange County and beyond who will be happy to teach you these skills. Retired police weapons trainers, career military vets, people with gun-handling resumes as long as a Barrett rifle. Why, then, go to the trouble of a shooting school in another state?

Well, if you're thinking you need a gun but aren't sure, Front Sight can answer a lot of questions you might not have thought to ask. Like, what does it REALLY take to operate a gun smoothly and safely? What are the decisions I should make before a threat materializes? Google searches and gun store clerks can get you started, but Front Sight provides a group of knowledgeable people with little or no financial stake in your decision.

For a fee, you can test drive some guns and gear. You'll receive an introduction to the ethical and legal considerations (thorny and unavoidable) of deciding to shoot someone. There's also the chance to pick the brains of other regular Joes (and Janes) who've had the same personal safety concerns you might have. After all that, you might decide other security options are preferable – say, improving your situational awareness and getting a nice big dog.

I'm fortunate to inhabit a low-threat environment, so the draw for me is less about safety and more about the physical challenge of training. Front Sight is big on the micro technique behind that. My lead instructor, a retiree from Arizona named Larry Mayer, brought a range of techniques for people struggling to hit where they aimed.

Shooting low and left? If you're a righty, you're probably squeezing the stock too hard. Just can't get your target groups to shrink? You might be releasing the trigger too far before subsequent shots, or not focusing your vision on the front element of the gun's sights. Tense the big muscles of the torso and arms to stabilize the pistol, but leave the fingers relaxed. Yes, it feels unnatural, but just try it. That's more analysis and articulation than many instructors can or will give, and putting it into use generates instant feedback – you hit closer to your point of aim (satisfaction), or you don't (frustration).

Trigger time

That last state is me at the end of Day Two. There's been a lot of lecture and demonstration, but not enough gun handling. I'm irritated that we can't put it all into practice while the memory is fresh. But they can't have you fiddling with your pistol while people are sitting in the row in front of you, since they don't want anyone to die from an accidental shot. Once class starts, you draw your pistol only in position, under supervision, on command.

Luckily, the third and fourth days pile on the basic shooting drills. Accuracy, from 3 yards away out to 15, is stressed. Sights and trigger, sights and trigger. Two rounds to the body, one to the head. Check your “six” (get into the habit of looking to the sides and behind you for other possible foes, since high-stress situations tend to cause tunnel vision). Switch places with your partner, watch him for safety lapses and technique flaws. Back on the line, draw and chamber check (confirm that the gun is ready to fire). Add body movement and sight reacquisition to the mix via multiple targets. Deal with weapon malfunctions – jams. Add some stress through a friendly competition exercise.

And finally, at the end, a skills test puts it all together: shooting for accuracy and speed and clearing malfunctions, all on a timer to give a bit of stress, so you know just how well you've absorbed the material. The object is to get as few points as possible. Missing or taking too long adds them – and with more than 100 points possible, you can total 13 or fewer to move on to the next level of training.

Only one person in my class manages that – and no, it isn't me. I'll shoot for that next time.

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